Indra:
You know I've admired your paintings for years, and am pleased to
be having this conversation with you. You came up with the title
for this discussion, tell me, why did you call it 'Wine and Cigarettes'?
X-8: Why ‘Wine
and Cigarettes’? Well I know we both like to imbibe once in
a while and I do appreciate a relaxing cigarette with friends, so
I thought that evoked a properly intimate setting. I’d rather
have wine and cigarettes than an SUV and cell phone.
Indra:
I wish I could join you in a ‘clope’ (as they are colloquially
called in France) but gave up a few months ago, still miss the aroma
of fresh tobacco with coffee. As for wine, we live bang in the middle
of the Cahors ‘black wine’ region in southern France.
Last month the vines were still dormant, gnarled black stumps, but
in between was a carpet of yellow hawkbit.
X-8: What is your
favorite wine?
Indra:
Top of my list is Chateau Bovila, which is local and organically
made.
X-8:
I've posted a Chateau Bovila label on GOD. I will try and find a
bottle here in LA.
Indra:
I’ll send you a couple of bottles. Well, let's suppose that
we have smoked a few clopes and are well away on the marvellous
Bovila... Now there are two things in my mind... first, the subjects
of your paintings are so dark, they are about pain, loss, disgust,
murder, death, yet the paintings themselves are full of light...
the light in fact comes bursting through them. How do you explain
this?
X-8: I'm not sure
what you mean by 'light'. The luminosity of the paint? Or the statement
of the work?
Indra: I mean the
luminosity of the paintings.
X-8: I never noticed
until you mentioned this. The effect may be the result of my painting
technique. I like to paint in a dark studio with only a 15 watt
bulb. Like a cave. The paint on the canvas must reflect what little
light there is to be effective. So you end up with a luminous palette
of rich and contrasting colors. I also like to use 'happy' and vibrant
colors sometimes to counterbalance the subject matter. It makes
the work more digestable to the viewer.
Indra: Painting in
low light, near darkness . . . apparently it’s something Rembrandt
also used to do.
X-8: I didn’t
know that.
Indra: Yet these light-filled
paintings are so dark, subject matter wise. One of my favourites
among your work is this painting. When I first saw it I was bowled
over by its beauty.
It looked to me like a human figure with bracken fronds growing
from its belly. I thought of the Green Man carvings you find in
medieval churches with leaves bursting out of their mouths. So here
was an image of the common life shared by man and nature, a growing
tree-man in an autumnal sort of coloration - and then I read the
title, ‘Suicide Bomber’, and it hit me in the gut. I
hadn't been expecting that - Palestine and Baghdad, blood, horror
and injustice - suddenly all this pain was in the painting that
a second before had seemed so calm and beautiful. I feel that wrench
whenever I see this painting and I still look at it in two ways
in order to recapture the feeling I first had, then seeing its bitter
politics. I wonder, did you intend it to be seen this way?
X-8:
I wanted the painting to be pretty and violent.
Indra:
Here's another painting that at first glance looks full of life,
exuberance, dancing figures, reminiscent of Matisse, only at second
glance do you see bullet wounds, blood and the title and realise
that these figures are not dancing, they're sprawled in death. Or
perhaps they're both, the painting contains the before and after,
the energy of the living as well as their corpses.
X-8:
Sniper. Acrylic and enamel marker on canvas.
6 feet by 5 feet. 2004.
X-8: The painting
is joyful and happy from a distance and full of death and chaos
up close. I liked that effect. Instead of dancing people in the
park you have a massacre in progress.
Indra: Where does
all this darkness and violence come from? Tell me about the things
that made an impact on you. I know some of this is already on your
website, where for example you talk of seeing your father’s
body, shot dead in the street. I'm guessing that some of this stuff
may be painful for you. Yet you talk of this damaging childhood
with a kind of nonchalant bravado as if it didn't matter.
X-8: Thank you. It
was 35 years ago. Only now have I been able to acknowledge it. I
am no longer connected to it emotionally.
During my 20’s, there was a
game called “Punk Rock Childhood” in which you try and
prove that your childhood was the worst. Whoever had the worst was
the winner. Others definitely had worse. But it was a way to wear
your unfortunate circumstances as a badge of honor. Kind of like
a battle scar.
Indra: Tell me about
your childhood.
X-8: I had a dysfunctional
family. My father tried to kill my mother when she was pregnant
with me and she went to a psychiatric facility of some sort. There
are no pictures of my mother and me from that time. I saw pictures
of me and various social workers. (I received prison made wallets
from my father but I never saw him. Met him a couple of times.)
She was released when I was 4 and we became a welfare family. Sometimes
she would have medical appointments at these state facilities where
the severely deformed lived. I remember a boy whose arms were shaped
like corkscrews. It was all very surreal.
We moved every year and soon I was
a content loner at home - inventing games to play on my own. We
eventually settled in the city of Whittier - which is Richard Nixon’s
home town.
She gave me some .38 caliber bullets one
year and said they were meant for her. I was 9.
Indra: What did she
mean by the .38 bullets?
X-8:
From what I have pieced together, my father apparently tried to
shoot her when she was pregnant. I guess it was my mother’s
way of showing that my father was a very bad man - he robbed banks
and tried to kill her as well.
Indra:
How did you feel about that? I mean, about your father trying to
shoot your mother?
X-8:
At the time I thought the bullets were just toys or trinkets. I
used to play with them and stare at them and wonder what they filled
with. I liked the sleek silver cases and copper tips. They were
pretty and shiny. I used to spin them on the ground over and over.
I eventually used .38 caliber bullets for art and embedded them
in wet tar in a piece I did in 1986. It hung at Al’s Bar,
the local artist’s bar. until all the bullets were taken as
souvenirs by patrons.
X-8:
Slaughterhouse, 6 feet by 5 feet, 2005
Indra: Your mother had a bad time, you grew up with
her. Did you feel protective of her?
X-8: We slept in a
small bedroom throughout my childhood. She cried in the middle of
the night. I felt sad and wondered what was wrong with her. Again,
I thought all this was the norm - you’re naïve and innocent
and you don’t know and you don’t ask.
She
tried to be a good mom. I look back and have to give her credit.
She did make an effort to bring me up ‘right’, even
though it was extremely strict. I wasn’t allowed to have anyone
visit. A lock was put on the phone so I couldn’t make calls.
I would be locked out of the house if I went out for the evening
and then would have to sleep in the park. I wasn’t allowed
to shave.
I just thought it was the norm.
Indra: The strictness
of it seems quite extreme. For example why weren't you allowed to
shave, or don't you know?
X-8: It was simply
suffocating. And as I grew up I realized how bizarre the whole thing
was and I became resentful of her.
I look back and realize she didn’t
want me to grow up. To her shaving meant I was becoming a man. She
wanted me to remain a child forever. She detested me becoming independent
and hanging with others besides her. She didn’t want to know
or meet those who were my contacts to the outside world.
Toward the end when I lived with her, she tried
to commit me to a mental institution because I began hanging with
other people besides herself.
The doctor talked with me and told me not to
worry. He prescribed her more pills. She was pissed. We didn’t
speak to each other for a year.
Indra: When did you
become aware that your childhood wasn't the norm?
X-8: I think when
I was forced to pull a discarded Christmas Tree from a trash dumpster
on Christmas morning so we could have a tree. I was seven.
People with smiling faces used to
deliver fruit baskets and boxes of food during holidays. I thought
everyone got free food. But I found out no one did. Only the really
poor.
I left home at 17 and never looked
back. My father was eventually shot to death in front of his house.
Indra:
You do extraordinary things like put a picture on your website of
your father covered by a blanket in the street. How did you feel
about your father?
X-8: I met him a couple
of times. He promised me a bowling ball when I was 10 but it never
arrived. I never forgave him for that and I lost trust in people.
When I was 15 I met him on Father’s
Day and he said I didn’t look like his son.
He worked in a factory and glued the soles
on shoes for a living. He was also an alcoholic. He asked to be
dropped off at the liquor store after our Father’s Day breakfast.
I never saw him again until I saw his dead body on the news.
I was an unwanted child. My mother
told me that. So I clearly was a burden to him. Why they didn’t
have an abortion I’ll never know.
X-8, The Poet, 5 feet by
6 feet. 2005
Indra: I think you
say on your website that you were brought up by your grandparents.
X-8: My grandfather
and grandmother were the center of the family. We met during weekends.
They lived in a barrio, which is a poor neighborhood where latins
lived. It still had dirt streets.
My aunts and uncles partied and drank
liquor while we played in the backyard playing and stealing cucumbers
from my grandma’s garden. I ate like 10 cucumbers one time
and got sick. To this day I can not stand cucumbers.
My cousins and I would drink the leftover
cocktails. We would play with matches and start fires. We burned
down the neighbor’s wooden shack one time and the fire department
figured out it was us and found the matches.
Indra:
Sounds like fun.
X-8: Then religion
overtook the extended family. They all became born again Christians.
Anyone who didn’t embrace Christianity would face eternal
fire in hell. I thought they had all become mental.
X-8
Crucifixion, 6 feet by 5 feet. 2003
Indra:
What sort of Christianity were they born again into?
X-8:
We were Catholic. When I was 5 I was taken to church in a new suit.
I hated the suit and it was a Latin Mass, so I didn’t understand
anything the guy up front in the white robe was saying. I threw
a tantrum and I never had to go to church or wear the suit again.
My family was all into gangs and crime.
Many of my uncles and cousins were in and out of jail. I guess one
day they all decided it was best to become ‘born again Christians’
as a way to change their life.
They still all are part of the same
Christian Fellowship but I avoided them because they were so aggressive
about converting others. I
was chased out of the parking lot of a relative’s wedding
when I was 17 with a friend of the family yelling at me telling
me I was going to Hell if I didn’t accept Christ as King of
The World. Very psycho.
Indra:
What are your feelings about religion? You'd had a very rough deal.
X-8: I question those
who try and control people.
I’ve read that religion has killed more people than all natural
disasters and fatal diseases combined.
I think it’s good for some people if you are weak and need
a crutch to help you along. I understand for some people it’s
a tradition. But I don’t think killing each other over an
invisible entity is really healthy.
I don’t think the values and
rules they set up in the name of ‘morality’ are useful.
For example I think suppressing the natural sexual drive only creates
sexual deviants. Just look at all the priests who become child molesters.
I was taught that sex was bad and
I became a very promiscuous person.
X-8:
Falling Through The Snow
Acrylic on canvas. 6 feet by 5 feet. 2005.
Indra:
Your early life sounds like unrelieved horror. Were there any good
moments?
X-8: I excelled in
school. It was an escape from my dreary homelife. To be involved
in other creative things showed me there were other things in life.
I knew that if I learned I could escape the cycle of poverty and
despair.
Indra:
What were your favourite subjects?
X-8:
I liked everything. My cousins used to tease me because I got A’s
and they got C’s and D’s. I liked music. I played the
trumpet.
I hung out at the local library and
pored over all the non-fiction books and foreign magazines. Der
Speigel was a favorite. German magazines always had naked ladies
in the back pages. It was a whole different world. An exciting world.
I decided I wanted to be a journalist
and write for a cool magazine. I took journalism classes and soon
became an editor at my high school paper.
Indra: Did you have
friends among the other pupils?
X-8:
I had a little boy’s bowl haircut in 3rd grade and the girls
used to chase me at recess screaming “Beatle! Beatle!”
The Beatles were just happening at the time. They used to pin me
down in the schoolyard and kiss me and then run away. I hid in the
boy’s bathroom during recess after that. They used to stand
by the door screaming “Beatle! Beatle!” I obviously
had no clue about sex.
I got taught about sex by boys at
school. They had dirty magazines. I couldn’t understand how
a penis could fit into such a bizarre looking thing. The vagina
fascinated me. It was like a strange creature.
Indra:
How did you get started painting?
X-8: At 15, I got a skin disorder called vitiligo.
It was a blessing in disguise. I withdrew from ‘normal’
society. I began to draw. I created pictures of devils, nazis, monsters
and suicides.
X-8: Suicide Siva, 6 feet by 5 feet,
2001
Indra: Where and how did you train?
X-8:
I am self-taught and I support self taught music and art. Schools
naturally teach technical ability. I like it when it’s crude.
That’s why I liked punk. Anyone could do it. You didn’t
need schooled talent. Academics were shunned. I feel the same way
about art. I don’t like mainstream stuff.
I did take a design class in college one
year and the teacher really liked my drawings. He pulled me aside
one day and said I didn’t need school to be an artist - just
go for it. He liked the splatters and drips that I left on the bottom
of the drawings. He was an inspiration. Even to this day. So I listened
to him, quit college and moved to downtown Los Angeles after that
and eventually lived in an large artist loft. It was 5000 square
feet for $600 a month. I lived with two others. We had to put the
toilet and sinks in ourselves. It was raw space. It was so big we
used to ride a Vespa in it.
I did abstracts for awhile. In 1993 I began
creating large figuratives and began to dig up the rotten stuff
inside me and release it on giant canvases.
Indra:
You view your art as a catharsis.
X-8:
I think it’s healthy to create when you are angry or depressed.
That way you don’t become a serial killer. There’s a
certain magic to catharsis.
I see my paintings as enlightening.
I am killing my internal devils through catharsis. All the paintings
are essentially self-portraits. That’s the essence of exorcistic
art. It’s a healthy process. I use simple imagery and universal
symbols in my work so it’s no surprise that devils and angels
play a prominent role.
I love creating alone. That’s obviously traceable to my childhood.
I like the feeling of releasing secret emotions and feelings, and
to do that, you create in a dark environment alone. It’s pure
and peaceful.
X-8:
Inside the Skull. Acrylic, latex, oilstick, urine and cigarette
burns on canvas. 6 feet by 5 feet.2002
Indra: You use a lot of unusual media - mud, blood,
urine, if memory serves. Why? How do they make the painting better
for you? A technical thing? A visceral connection with the work?
Transference of life force?
X-8:
Living in Downtown Los Angeles, I started with mud because it was
natural and primitive. I mixed the mud with urine because I felt
that it combined elements of both man and nature. It was also anti-academic.
It was a great way to separate yourself from the college taught
brainwashed artists in the neighborhood. Mud had a wonderful texture
too.
The blood and hair paintings
had a more urban overtone. Blood and hair samples are major evidence
in homicide cases. It was no surprise that images of serial killers
soon followed.
Indra: I have been
following discussions on an alchemy forum with some interest (albeit
little understanding) they talk of a "spiritus mundi"
which alchemists through the years have tried to capture in various
ways... starting with piss, shit, organic materials etc. Without
this magic life force, their "work" is inert. I find the
same sort of thing in writing...
X-8: I’ve explored
a little into the subject of alchemy, but not enough to comment
on it. We are all DNA and stardust. I’ll leave it at that.
X-8: Speeding Under A Black Sun (Octopus)
Acrylic on canvas. 6 feet by 4 feet. 2003.
Indra: We've already
touched briefly on your paintings being infused with light. Of course
how one views a 6 x 6 foot canvas in reality must differ from how
it's seen via the web.
X-8: People are usually
amazed at the size of the paintings. Viewing them on a website doesn’t
give the whole effect. It’s a much more bold emotion when
you see the carnage up close and life-size.
In regards to presentation,
X-8 is a pseudonym that comes from my favorite letter and number
and it remains a pen name. It is somewhat a brand name. Tony Curtis
once remarked he would have been more well known if he had named
himself ‘Cosmo 5000’ or something. Psuedonyms are common
in the music world, so I don’t see a problem.
I often use the music industry as
an analogy for how I approach the art world: The paintings are songs.
The individual series are the albums.
Using this analogy, art galleries
are the record labels and clubs rolled into one. When you don’t
like the labels and clubs, you start your own thing.
Indra:
Like you did with your music and your involvement with the LA punk
scene?
X-8:
When I was about 16 punk began and it was all about disaffected
youth from bad homes, abusive families and everything. And revolting
against it. For some it was fad but I totally related and embraced
the anti-social aspect of the music and the scene. It was freedom
from one’s shitty childhood and you hung out with others who
experienced the same hardships. There were no rules. And it was
fun.
X-8: Coma. Acrylic, urine and colored
gel on canvas.
6 feet by 5 feet.2005.
Indra:
Do you have music on when you paint?
X-8:
Yes. Most of the time.
Indra:
What kind?
X-8:
I sometimes wear headphones with classical music or German industrial
music playing full blast as I paint at 3 o’clock in the morning.
I love the sun rising as the work dries, like a silent remnant of
a nightmare or evidence of a dark horrible adventure.
Indra: I am really
interested in how painters use paint, as a physical substance to
work with, whether with brushes, knives, whatever, the physical
side of painting.
X-8: I love the texture
of paint. I love the smell of it. You name it- oil, latex and acrylic.
I love large pieces because they seem so powerful.
Indra:
When looking at paintings on the internet, I miss the experience
of seeing them close up. Brushstrokes and textures and nuances disappear.
Nothing will ever beat standing near the picture of course, almost
smelling the paint. In the website image of 'Suicide Bomber' one
can't really see the texture of the paint, but I'm imagining it
laid on quite thick, maybe allowed to crack, and perhaps scraped
off again.
X-8: That one is more
textural than the others. I liked the matte opaque paint I was using
and laid it on thick.
X-8,
Suicide Bomber, 6 feet by 4 feet, 2005
Suicide
Bomber detail 1 (click to enlarge)
Suicide
Bomber detail 2 (click to enlarge)
Indra:
Painting is a very physical activity and must be tiring if you're
hours in front of a canvas. How do you work?
X-8:
I use sleep deprivation and psychotropics. I once painted for 5
straight days without sleep. Sleep deprivation provides a nice hallucinatory
psychosis to work from. You start seeing things. Monsters.
Indra: Do you have
a routine?
X-8:
I work on several large canvases at a time. All in various stages.
Some are in a ‘ferment’ stage and are photographed after
a couple of months. I used to videotape works in progress- capturing
the building layers and changing colors. I videotaped a face painting
from start to finish and showed it to friends. But when they saw
the stream of piss splashing on the canvas at the end they were
speechless
Indra: How many hours
will you put into each painting, each stage?
X-8:
It depends on the work. Some take a year, some are done in 24 hours.
'Reincarnation' was done in 24 hours. I work in layers so it can
be a long process.
Indra:
How do you begin?
X-8:
Staring at a blank canvas loaded. (laughs) The blank canvas becomes
a mirror. It tells me what to do. Empty white spaces are full of
ideas and voices.
I buy my canvas in rolls- I used to say that the blank canvas was
just a large piece of toilet paper torn from the roll- it provided
a space to dump all the negative thoughts and poisoned emotions.
The art was the fecal matter. But comparing your work to shit is
not good, so I don’t say that anymore.
Indra:
Do you sketch first, or go straight in and let the theme emerge?
X-8:
It’s mostly stream-of-consciouness. I sometimes draw on paper
but I find it undesirable. Sometimes I will paint the whole work
upside down from start to finish- it creates unexpected design.
Like mixing a song in a studio, the tough part is knowing when to
stop. I sometimes layer too much and the message gets muddled by
the cacophony of color. I have fucked up a few works by working
them to death and then having to paint over them.
Indra:
Where do the ideas come from? I was pleased that a passage in The
Death of Mr. Love inspired one idea.
X-8:
Drunk Or Dying, 5 feet by 6 feet. 2007
X-8: That was 'Drunk or Dying'. I don’t know.
I’ve always liked the macabre so I tend to start there. After
reading a passage in your book with a similar visual, I envisioned
a large fountain of urine spraying from a homeless man laying in
the gutter. I have read that when you’re dying all your bowel
movements let go. Not pretty.
Indra:
What is it that I can feel in these paintings? I don't believe it
is rage. It's too intense to be cynicism. I know you said you were
detached from the pain of your childhood, but there is something
curiously vulnerable about these pictures.
X-8:
I try and mix sorrow with anger for balance. I think that gives
them a balance. Most images are analogies to events in my life.
For example, “Headless Angel” originally was a white
angel (with a head) for a girl I was dating as an homage to her.
As the relationship deteriorated, I painted it black and eventually
decapitated it when the relationship ended.
Indra:
I’d like to send you a copy of Animal's People. The
narrative from that crippled boy's mouth is perhaps an analogy to
your outpourings on canvas. Animal does feel rage, although not
all the time, occasionally he allows himself to feel gentler emotions
but despises himself for it. He is not telling his story in order
to change the world although I, his surrogate author, am on record
as naively saying that I would like to help shape the future. Do
you have any such concerns?
X-8:
My interests are all subversive. (laughs)
Indra:
Is it ridiculous to ask how you would like people to react or respond
to the paintings?
X-8:
I don’t think about it. You can’t please everybody and
I’m not trying to. People are inevitably going to misinterpret
the paintings. Symbolism is sometimes hard to interpret.
Indra:
Finally, I'd like to ask you to talk about two more of your paintings.
This figure (below) reminds me of Nijinsky
as the faun in L'Apres Midi D'un Faune, costume by
Bakst.
X-8:
Addiction and Perversion, acrylic and latex
on canvas. 6 feet by 5 feet. 2001
X-8: : I see your comparison. “Addiction And
Perversion” is a self-portrait of my possible future. The
skin disorder vertiligo slowly spreads all over the body with time.
If I’m going to be a spotted man, I might as well go down
in flames with drugs and sex, hence the title. It will make a great
movie.
Indra:
I am especially interested in ‘End Of The World’ as
my new novel (in progress) is about the apostle John as a very old
man on the island of Patmos and the writing of the book of Revelation.
X-8:
End Of The World. Acrylic, latex and saltwash
on canvas. 6 feet by 5 feet. June 2001
X-8:
Is that the one who got beheaded? I saw “The Ten Commandments”
once? 'End Of The World' pre-dated 9-11 but had symbols of it in
it - an aircraft disaster, a dark messiah and his followers, the
abuse and torture of women and a crescent moon in a mountainous
desert. It was supposed to be a vision of hell.
At
this point in the conversation, my novel Animal's People was nominated
for the 2007 Man Booker Prize.
X-8:
Congratulations
on your Booker nomination.
I'm having an incandescent experience with this interview. Given
this pace, I think we'll be done in 2013.
More work, information about the artist and information about acquiring
paintings at X-8's website
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